


Jones Meets Jones

by fictionalcandie



Series: The Case Files of the Jones and Jones Detective Agency [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Case Fic, F/M, Gen, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 16:36:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalcandie/pseuds/fictionalcandie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone is brutally murdering women in Cardamom City. It's up to Dr Martha Jones and her new friend, Constable Ianto Jones, to crack the case and catch the killer.</p><p><em>The First Case File of Jones & Jones</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jones Meets Jones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [duva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/duva/gifts).



It’s after the third killing that he walks into Martha’s lab.

Inspector Raeburn brings him, though the Inspector’s got a grumpy enough face on that he doesn’t look altogether pleased to be doing so. The constable—following the Inspector rather like a puppy, if puppies wore police uniforms scrupulously cleaned and pressed, with every button and crease in its proper place—has a bland expression on his face, but his eyes take in her lab quickly and eagerly. And, Martha gets the impression, thoroughly.

Martha pulls the sheet up over the corpse anyway.

“Doctor,” Inspector Raeburn says, with a nod of greeting for her.

“Inspector Raeburn,” Martha returns, and moves to take off her medical gloves and wash her hands. “If you’re here for the results of the post-mortem on the latest victim, you’ll have to wait. I haven’t finished it yet.”

“No need to worry, Doctor,” the Inspector says. “I’m here on—a different errand.”

“Oh, really. And what’s that?” Martha asks.

The constable at the Inspector’s shoulder clears his throat.

The Inspector sighs, faintly. He lifts a hand and gestures at the constable. “Dr Jones, may I introduce Ianto Jones,” he begins, his voice rather stiff. “Constable, this is Dr Martha Jones, who’s been handling the bodies of those dead girls.”

“Good morning, Dr Jones,” Constable Jones says, perfectly politely, and executes a small but correct bow in her direction. “I’m sorry if we’re disturbing you.”

“Not at all, Constable Jones,” Martha lies, returning the bow. She glances at Inspector Raeburn, giving him an expectant look.

The Inspector sighs again. “Constable Jones has been doing most of the legwork on this case. He was—insistent that he speak with you.”

“If it’s convenient,” Constable Jones adds. His expression is open, earnest, like he can’t wait to get started, and he’s looking right at her face.

After a moment, Martha says, “Well, I suppose it can’t hurt, can it?”

“Can it, indeed,” the Inspector mutters. He clears his throat immediately after, before Martha has to decide if she wants to respond, and says, “Ask the doctor your questions, Constable, and try not to get in her way.”

“Yes, sir,” Constable Jones says.

“Right, then. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve an appointment,” the Inspector says, and takes himself back out the door.

Martha is left with Constable Jones, who, despite how eager to he looks, doesn’t say anything right away.

“So,” she starts, “what is it you wanted to know?”

“Everything,” Constable Jones responds immediately. He steps farther into the lab, and looks over at Martha’s examination table, where the latest victim’s body is still laid out, gruesome and unsettling, mostly covered by the sheet.

“Tell me _everything_ you learned from the women’s bodies.”

—

When he said he wanted to know everything she’d found out, Constable Jones apparently really _did_ mean that he wanted to know _everything_. He started off with the basics, things anyone looking at the corpses could have told him, like their hair and eye color, and he takes it all in with barely a nod, scribbling away in a little notebook he pulled from the inside pocket of his overcoat.

Then he gets to the actually medical things, and he asks even _more_ questions.

“The cause of death was the same, for all three?” he asks, glancing up from the notebook.

Martha nods.

“And that was what, precisely?”

“Blood loss. From their slit throats.”

“Those weren’t the only damage the women sustained, though?”

“No.” Martha grimaces. “Not by far.”

“What else was there?”

Martha goes through the list. It takes a while.

“And those wounds appeared on _all_ of the bodies?”

Martha nods again. “Yes. All three, precisely the same wounds. The same size, in the same places.”

“And were they sustained before or after the death blow?”

At that, Martha hesitates.

Constable Jones looks up, right at her face again, and his expression is utterly serious, intense. “Dr Jones? Before or after?”

“It’s difficult to be sure, but, if I had to guess?”

“Please,” Constable Jones says.

“I would say before.”

“So they were tortured, and then killed.”

“That’s my belief, yes.”

Constable Jones hums, a short, thoughtful noise, to himself. He flips a page in his notebook, then after a moment flips it back.

“Doctor,” he says, politely, and looks up at her with a half-smile that feels a little apologetic, “you didn’t mention the victims’ restraint wounds. Could you detail those for me?”

Martha blinks. “I didn’t mention them, because there weren’t any.”

He stares at her.

“What?” he says, after a moment.

“The women don’t show clear signs of being restrained at all,” Martha explains.

“That’s—very odd. And there are _no_ signs of restraint on _any_ of the bodies?” Constable Jones asks, frowning down at his little notebook. It won’t hold anymore answers for him than the two post-mortem reports Martha’s found herself staring at off and on since this third body was found have been able to give _her_ , Martha bets.

“Absolutely none,” Martha confirms. “And no defensive wounds, either. It’s almost as though none of the victims even put up a fight against their attackers.”

“No-one my partner and I spoke to said anything about overhearing a struggle, either,” Constable Jones says, with a nod. “And there are no signs of it, near the victims’ last known locations, before they disappeared. Or where they were discovered.” He’s still frowning.

“What is it, Constable?”

“It’s—nothing. Never mind. And, please, it’s Ianto.”

Martha gives Constable Jones the same look she gives Mickey when he’s gone all sulkish and won’t tell her why, hiding in his tinkering with his shoulders hunched around his ears. Mickey never holds out long against that look, even when Martha’s aiming it at his back.

To her satisfaction, Constable Jones doesn’t bear up under it for long, either.

“Just that, well. My reports from the witnesses—such as they are, since no-one actually saw any of the attacks—match up with the findings of your medical exams, but they don’t make any _sense_ ,” he says.

He looks up at her, his blue eyes wide and clear, despite the tense lines of his frown.

“Why wouldn’t they struggle, Dr. Jones?”

“I have no idea.”

“Wouldn’t _you_ struggle, if you were being taken? Being attacked?” he presses.

“Of course. With everything I’ve got,” Martha says, nodding.

“Myself, as well,” Constable Jones—Ianto; she’s given him the stop-being-a-child look, she might as well take the liberty of his first name—says. He looks back down, lifts his notebook a bit, apparently to call her attention back to it. “But to all appearances, Janet Little, Sally Longstreet, and Sarah Brown didn’t raise so much as their little finger to defend themselves.”

“I know,” Martha says, because she _does_ ; she’s wound up with splitting headaches every night for the last week, from trying to work it all out in a way that made _sense_. It’s got so bad that last night Mickey actually tore himself away from his work room to make her tea without even being asked, because the migraine was bad enough to be bleeding through and making his head pound, too, from half the house away. “I thought at first they might have been drugged.”

Ianto perks up a little, his head rising and his eyes widening hopefully. “Did you check for that? Run their blood, dust their lips and nostrils for chloroform trace—”

Martha shakes her head. “All of it,” she says; “There was _nothing_ ,” and watches his face fall again. 

It feels too much like kicking a puppy, and not just because Martha wishes for her own sake that she had satisfying answers to give him, too.

She clears her throat, and prompts, “What about you?”

“I—Sorry, what?” Ianto asks, frowning in confusion again.

“Inspector Raeburn said you’ve been doing legwork for the case, and you’ve got that—” Martha leans forward, reaches over and taps the notebook he’s still got gripped tightly in his hands, “—all full of things. What have you learned from the living that I didn’t from the dead?”

“Oh, I. Well.” Ianto pauses. He swallows a couple of times, Martha can see his adam’s apple working above the simple, professional knot of his tie. “I don’t know if I really ought to—”

“Come on, Constable Ianto Jones,” Martha says, grinning. “I showed you mine. Show me yours.”

“Well,” he says, hesitating and fiddling with the little pencil that goes with his notebook, “I suppose it can’t hurt.”

“Excellent!” Martha hooks her specially-wheeled lab chair, cushion and rollers courtesy of Mickey, with her ankle and drags it over. She settles onto it, folds her hands in her lap, and looks at Ianto, waiting for him to begin.

“When Janet Little disappeared, the only thing could witness to was a dog barking loudly for either two or five minutes straight, and a stranger in a tricorne hat and an expensive black coat, with something silver pinned to the front of it—like a rose inside a star, one man said—entering the alley where Ms Little usually, ah, contracted her business.”

“That’s—it, really?”

Ianto nods, matching her grimace with one of his own. He turns a couple of pages.

“As for Sally Longstreet’s disappearance, her best shawl was found in her usual place at half-two o’clock in the morning, approximately twenty minutes after she was last seen. The witness in question, Mary Dawkins, was largely unhelpful, though she saw a large, expensive carriage—which she was very certain did not belong to any of her, or Ms Longstreet’s, regulars—rounding the corner and heading for Ms Longstreet, and she recounts feeling jealous of the idea that Ms Longstreet was about to get a new, flush, ah, patron.”

“I doubt she’s jealous now.”

“Indeed.” Ianto turns a few more pages. “Finally, the most recent victim, Sarah Brown, was also last seen in her usual place of… business. Several witnesses said they saw someone they’d never seen before, in a fine, dark coat and a plumed hat. Two of them mentioned seeing something silver on the front of the coat, like a many-pointed star. Susie Woods said the star had seven points exactly, as she remembers because seven is her lucky number, and anyone she picks up at seven minutes after the hour is ‘always good for it’.”

Martha stifles a snicker, as Ianto closes his book with a little snap. He meets her eyes, and tips his head expectantly.

“That is _all_ my witness reports have given me. As you can see, almost nothing of any use,” he says.

“Well. We’ll work on it,” Martha says.

Ianto blinks at her. “ _We_ will?”

“Yes. Definitely, we will.”

In response, Ianto offers her a little smile. Martha decides that he’s tentatively pleased at the idea of an alliance. She smiles back.

—

Ianto lets Martha be the one to knock on Inspector Raeburn’s office door. It’s only when he follows her into the office and she watches the smile Inspector Raeburn greeted her with slide off as Inspector Raeburn spots him, that she realizes why.

“Dr Jones,” the Inspector says, more coolly than Martha is used to. “And Constable Jones. Have you been bothering the doctor?”

“No, sir,” Ianto says. He’s standing up very straight and proper.

“We’ve been going over the case,” Martha puts in, quickly. “And we’ve got—we actually have a theory that might help us catch the killer.”

Inspector Raeburn’s gaze darts between them. He puts down his pen—it’s a fancy long-feathered quill, the kind that are really annoying to use, and Martha’s always thought them unbearably pretentious. She bites her cheek on a snarky comment.

“And what theory would this be?”

Martha licks her lips, and starts, “Well, the victims all had multiple wounds.”

“Yes, I did actually know that, having seen the bodies,” the Inspector says. “And having read your post-mortem reports.”

“The thing is, I’m pretty sure that they were all inflicted _before_ the cause of death,” Martha says. “Only none of the victims show any sign of struggling against restraints, or—or anything like that.”

“Perhaps they were drugged,” the Inspector suggests, almost dismissive. His eyes wander back toward whatever he was writing.

“No,” Ianto says. “Sir.”

The Inspector’s lips thin.

“I’ve tested for everything we can think of, and they’ve all come back negative. There’s no known drug that could do this and leave no trace,” Martha hurries to say. “Certainly nothing available to just anyone on the street.”

“And the wounds themselves,” Ianto puts in, pulling out his notebook and waving it about. “They’re clearly the work of a professional.”

Inspector Raeburn huffs. “A professional _what_ , butcher?”

“Hardly,” Martha snorts.

Ianto nods. “We think more along the lines of a mortician, possibly a nurse—but most likely a doctor.”

“A doctor. You think this—this mutilation is the work of a _doctor_ ,” Inspector Raeburn repeats.

“It’s the best conclusion we can draw. The precision of wounds, almost surgical; the placing of them, intended to cause excruciating pain without killing. It all points to an educated person, probably with medical schooling if not experience. You must see that a doctor is the—”

“I don’t see that at all,” the Inspector says.

Martha shares a frowning glance with Ianto.

“But, sir,” Ianto starts. “It’s clear that—”

“It’s _clear_ that you have no evidence of any of this,” the Inspector says, interrupting. “It’s the merest speculation, gross speculation, to suggest that any upstanding person could have done this. We are surely looking for a thug or thugs, as the investigation has been doing thus far.”

“But, _sir_ ,” says Ianto, eyes wide and cheeks pale. “ _Really_.”

“How could simple lowlifes have the technology to immobilize the victims so—”

“They’re _whores_ ,” the Inspector snaps. “Women, probably underfed and underweight. It wouldn’t take _technology_ to overpower the likes of them.”

Martha inhales sharply. She tamps down her first, immediate, cutting response, and after a moment, says, “My findings are that—”

The Inspector cuts her off, again, and Ianto too, as he opens his mouth to voice the objections flashing in his eyes.

“Dr Jones, Constable Jones. I think I’ve listened to quite enough of this—this foolishness. I suggest that you, Doctor,” the Inspector pauses, and points an imperious finger at Martha, “return to your lab, and see if you can’t get your _findings_ to agree with the facts. As for you, Constable—”

Ianto’s shoulders stiffen.

“—Why don’t you get back out on the streets and see whether you can turn up any _likely_ suspects, hm?” the Inspector concludes. He doesn’t bother pointing any fingers at Ianto, just stabs one toward his office door.

Martha doesn’t move to leave right away, standing there and staring at the Inspector, a little stunned by how quickly and entirely this meeting has gone off the track of what she expected. Ianto doesn’t move, either.

The Inspector’s face darkens, and his brows draw down low. “Was I _unclear_?” he says, his hazel eyes darting between Martha and Ianto sharply. He jabs his finger toward the door again. “You are _dismissed_ , Jones and Jones.”

“I see,” Ianto says. His voice is level, but his heavy tone implies that he’s not talking about their dismissal. After a long, pointed moment, he adds, “ _Sir_.”

Inspector Raeburn’s lips thin.

“Get out of my office, Constable,” he says, dangerously.

“We’re going,” Martha says, fast, and steps quickly toward the door. Ianto follows, she’s relieved to see.

—

“That could’ve gone better,” Martha says, to break the silence, once they’re alone in the hall by the steamlift down to the atrium.

“We’re right, I know we are,” Ianto says back. A quick glance at his face reveals that he’s staring, fixedly, at the steamlift’s call lever, which Martha already pulled. “And Inspector Raeburn knows it, too.”

Martha snorts. “He didn’t sound like he—”

“He wouldn’t have got so angry, if he didn’t know,” Ianto counters. “He must know. But he’s covering it up, because he doesn’t like it.”

“Shh!” Martha checks the hallway, hurriedly, but there’s nobody else there, to have heard Ianto’s words. The grinding of the steamlift’s clockworkings is the only other sound in the corridor. “Do you realize what you’re suggesting? We’re in _Police Headquarters_ , Ianto, maybe this isn’t the best place,” she drops her voice to barely above a whisper, “—for you to be _making accusations against a senior inspector_!”

“Someone is _killing people_ ,” Ianto hisses, rounding on her suddenly in a swirl of capes from his greatcoat. “And because Raeburn wants us chasing shadows instead of letting me look for the real culprit, it’s going to _keep happening_.”

Martha does another quick visual sweep of the corridor. They’re still the only ones present, thank heavens. She steps in close, puts a hand on his arm hoping to calm him, and keeps her voice down as she says, “Ianto, look at me.”

It takes a moment, but Ianto looks, something fierce burning behind those blue eyes as they meet hers.

“Do you have any intention of stopping looking for who could really have done this?” she asks—demands, really. She’s pretty sure of the answer but, maybe, maybe Ianto needs to hear himself say it.

He takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. From the hand on his arm, she feels it shudder all the way through him.

“No,” he says. “None at all.”

“Do you think I’m going to?” Martha presses.

Ianto shakes his head.

She gives a sharp nod, squeezes his arm once, and lets go. “Then stop trying to get yourself fired,” she says, crisping up her voice as the steamlift hisses to a stop on their level, and the doors open with a series of cheerful clicks. “And play along.”

“Right you are, Dr Jones.”

Ianto follows Martha onto the lift, and his face is all business again.

—

“…and he actually said—” Martha stops, and frowns at Mickey. She can only see the side of his face—because he’s still turned toward his work bench—and actually only the bottom half of it, thanks to the big opaque goggles he’s got strapped on. (She’d laugh at them like she used to, except she still remembers the time that army commission light project went off in his face and the goggles were all that kept his eyes there in his head where she likes them.) “Mickey. Are you even actually listening to me?”

“Mm, babe?” Mickey looks up from whatever he’s working on—it looks like the pepperpot that’s been missing from their kitchen for almost a week, plus some sort of clockwork something because _now it’s moving on its own_ , and it definitely didn’t do that before it disappeared—and over to her. “Raeburn said what?”

“That I should get my findings to agree with the facts. As if they were different things,” Martha recounts, angry itch burning up her spine all over again. It’s almost worse than before, now that she’s had time to really consider what it means, how there’s not really an honorable explanation for that kind of dismissiveness—and the way Raeburn had spoken to Ianto right after, Ianto’s poor, furious, lost little face.

It must be strong enough for Mickey to feel, or else it’s just showing on her face, because his eyebrows are creeping slowly up. He cups his hands—wrapped in his heavy leather safety gloves with most of the finger lengths missing, for dexterity—around the project on the work bench and twists to face her more fully.

She takes a deep breath, tries to will herself calm again, and pastes a smile on her face. “But whatever. Not like he’s the boss of me, or anything. What are you working on there?”

“Little something for a competition with Tosh for the Artificer’s Guild, it’s just a—” Mickey pauses. He frowns. “It’s nothing, babe. You’re not just angry, you’re _furious_.”

“Well, yeah,” Martha says.

And, at Mickey still just staring at her, curiosity and concern that weren’t her own making a warm little nest under her ribs, “I mean, the Inspector, whose job it’s supposed to be to catch the people who do things like this, who _kill_ people, basically told me to leave it, to let whoever’s doing this get away with it.”

Mickey snorts. “Am I supposed to believe you’re gonna listen?”

“Well. It’s my job on the line, isn’t it.”

“If you can do something that might help stop this, Martha,” Mickey says. “You’ve _got_ to, haven’t you?”

Martha looks away from Mickey’s face, down at his hands. They’ve gone still while he spoke, proof he’s serious. Under the cage of his fingers, the little clockwork pepperpot he was fiddling with is still trying to wheel around the surface of his work table, though he doesn’t seem to have noticed that yet.

“Yeah. Yeah, I definitely think I do,” she agrees.

His grin is like a gas lamp turning on in a dark room at midnight.

“That’s my Martha. You catch that sicko creep, babe.”

A laugh bursts out of Martha, surprising her. The killer _is_ , after all, a sicko creep, but usually all she hears is ‘murderer’. “Well, I’ll do my best.”

Mickey nods, short and matter-of-fact, like he’s never expected less from her.

He hasn’t, really.

“Don’t forget,” he says, even as he turns his attention back to the clockwork pepperpot, “to take that crackler I made you, when you’re out catching ‘im. Want you to get home safe at the end of the day.”

Martha leans down into his space, plants a kiss on his cheek, just under the edge of his big work googles. “I always do.”

—

Ianto stops in at Martha’s lab just as she’s setting up to finish the post-mortem the next day—teeth gritted in frustration because now she’s _sure_ Inspector Raeburn isn’t going to listen to anything she finds—and skirts the edges of asking if she’s still sure she doesn’t want to do as she’s told.

“Get out of my hair so I can try to find something useful,” she snaps, finally.

Ianto looks relieved, and goes without another word.

—

He’s there again around midday, a pastry box in his hand that smells far and away more appetizing than her sad little cold chicken sandwich. He’s carrying a fully-loaded tray in his other hand, balanced on his splayed fingertips, teapot still gently steaming, and she has absolutely no idea where it came from—she’s never seen its like in the hospital before, and he surely couldn’t have brought it like that all the way from the station house—but finds she doesn’t care because _there are two cups_.

“I’ve spoken to everybody associated with the first two victims again,” Ianto tells her, while she’s being careful to not put more than two bites’ worth of hot cinnamon bun in her mouth at once. His face is drooping at the edges, eyes big and round and sad, more like a puppy than ever.

Martha swallows, and prompts, “Nothing new?”

“Not a single thing,” he says, and sighs as he takes a nibble of his own cinnamon bun.

—

Ianto stops in once more, as Martha is straightening up to go home at the end of the day. He’s still in his uniform, but the knot of his tie is coming loose, and the top button of his collar’s undone.

“I really hope you’ve come up with something,” he says, morose and heavy. “Because the only new detail I’ve uncovered all day is that the plume in our mysterious man from the third murder’s hat was orange, Susie Woods remembers because it’s her favorite color and she always gives gentlemen who wear it a discount.”

“No, I’ve got nothing. Sorry,” Martha says.

Ianto sighs. “I was afraid of that.”

“Well, there’s always tomorrow.” Martha stops next to him, on her way to the door, and touches her fingertips to his arm, barely a brush that he can probably hardly feel through the wool of his overcoat, just meant to remind him that he’s not alone in this. She isn’t, either, and maybe that’s part of why she does it.

“Come on,” she says, gently. “I’ll walk you out.”

In the hallway, Ianto falls into step with her, and walks at her side the whole way out onto the cobblestones of the street.

—

When Martha gets home, Mickey meets her in the doorway, apparently done with all his projects for the evening, and kisses her straight away.

That pretty effectively ends thinking about the murders that night, anyway.

—

Martha is determined.

Today, she’ll find _something_ to help with their case, something to give Ianto that’s more than bland assurances that she’s on the same side as him.

“Of course you will,” Mickey replies, when she puts her teacup back in its saucer and says so. He’s separating the morning paper to pass her half across the table. “Ianto, that’s the copper helping you hunt down the sicko creep killer, yeah?”

Martha nods. “Yes. Constable Ianto Jones.”

At that, Mickey grins. “Well, with a pair of Joneses on the case, you’re bound to get it.”

Martha takes her half of the paper, grinning back.

Halfway through reading an article about the Science Consortium’s latest project demonstration yesterday, some Dr. Merrick and his new ray gun, she pauses. It’s—there’s something about it that—it just seems so _familiar_ —Martha goes back up to the beginning of the story, and starts it over.

Something about the whole thing is nagging at her. The article sounds, well, almost familiar, except Martha’s never heard anything about this project before, she’s sure she’d remember if she’d known there was any kind of device that could just render a person immobile like— 

—And then it clicks.

From the corner of her eye, across the table, she sees Mickey’s head jerk up. It takes her a second to process, because, oh, good _god_.

“Martha?” he says, sharp.

Martha tears her eyes away from the paper, gets a proper look at him, and—He’s halfway up from his seat, face wide open with worry. She cringes, rueful. “Sorry, love,” she says. “Only I just—Sorry.”

“Something just sent your heart leaping bad enough I felt like I was getting kicked in the chest,” Mickey says. He’s still staring at her, anxious little rovings of his eyes over her face. “What the hell, babe?”

“Just, something hit me,” she says, rustling the paper in explanation. “I think I might have worked out how that sicko creep killer is doing it.”

Mickey keeps staring at her for a little longer, dark eyes searching and concerned. Slowly, he nods. “That’s—good,” he says, and drops back into his seat. “Maybe save the revelations for when we aren’t eating? I don’t like being terrified over breakfast.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that,” Martha says, smiling reassuringly. She reaches over and squeezes his hand. “Accident.”

“No worries. So, you think you’ve cracked it, then?” Mickey says.

Martha nods. “Yeah. Well, not cracked it, cracked it, I dunno who’s done it, but I do know _how_ , and that’s a step up from where we were yesterday.”

“That’s my Martha.”

Martha smiles back. As soon as Ianto comes into the lab today, she’s going to share this with him. She can’t wait to see his face.

—

“Dr Jones!”

It’s been five minutes since Martha got to her lab and got everything set up, and already, her door is swinging open.

“Ianto!” Martha says, not bothering to keep the excitement from her voice, as he enters the room. “I was hoping you’d stop in early today. You’ll never believe it, but I think I’ve figured out how the killer’s doing it!”

“Have you?” Ianto pauses inside the door, to remove his top hat and shake out his greatcoat. The heavy wool is nearly soaked at the shoulders, as if he’s spent more time in today’s light rain than just walking here from the station house would warrant; but the newspaper he pulls from an inside pocket is dry.

“Oh, you’ve seen it,” Martha says.

Ianto follows her gaze down to the paper. “This? The paper?”

“The device! It was in the _Times_ today,” Martha explains. She goes over to the desk where she left the copy of the _Cardamom Times_ she’d brought in from home this morning, filched from under the long-suffering sigh of Mickey, who’d not finished reading it yet. She’s circled the demonstration picture, and circled the relevant part of the article twice. “An inventor from the Science Consortium was giving a demonstration over the weekend, a—”

“Handheld paralyzing ray,” Ianto says.

Martha nods, and grins. “Yes! I think it must be what our killer used, he must have somehow got his hands on a prototype, or—”

“Had access to the experiment. I know,” Ianto says.

“Oh.” Martha deflates a little. “You worked it out, too did you?”

“Yes, and. Well. Dr Jones,” Ianto says. He offers her the paper he’s been holding, which isn’t the _Cardamom Times_ , after all, but the _City Gazette_. Martha accepts it, a little confused. The front page is coverage of the demonstration, too, but—

“Look at the picture, Dr Jones.”

Instead of a photograph of the demonstration in progress, like in the _Times_ , the _Gazette_ has run a picture of the man behind the invention, Dr Merrick.

“Oh, my god,” Martha says, staring.

In the picture, Dr Merrick is wearing a tricorne hat with a large feather on the band, and pinned to the front of his greatcoat is an Imperial Merit Medallion—a seven-point star overlaid with a rose in bloom.

“Oh, my _god_.” Martha looks up. “Dr _Merrick_ is our murderer?”

“Well. He certainly matches our description. How many of those medallions has the Imperial Court issued in the last few decades, do you reckon?” Ianto asks, raising an eyebrow slightly.

“Can’t be more than a dozen,” Martha says. She sets the paper down, but can’t seem to stop staring at the picture.

“Nine, actually,” Ianto says. “Three of them almost forty years ago, and six of the recipients are already deceased.”

“And the medallion goes back to the Court after they die,” Martha acknowledges.

“That leaves only three still in public hands, counting Dr Merrick. I went to the Library before reporting to the station this morning, and with Ms Noble’s help I’ve located the remaining two.”

“And where are they?”

“Not within a hundred miles of Cardamom City,” Ianto says. “A ninety-two-year-old gentleman on the southern coast, and a lady in her seventies, last seen brewing exceptionally strong whiskey out of a palatial cabin somewhere up in the Highlands.”

Martha touches the edge of the _Gazette_. “Dr Merrick, then. It must be Dr Merrick.”

“Or else someone is going to _quite_ a lot of trouble to frame him,” Ianto says.

Martha scoffs. “I’ll tell you which I think is more likely.”

“Indeed,” Ianto says, nodding. “I thought as much, myself.”

“We’ll need to prove it,” Martha says.

“I know.”

Martha looks at him, expectant. He raises his eyebrows. “Well?” she asks. “Any ideas?”

“Not at the mo—”

There’s a knock at the door.

“Uh—Come in!” Martha calls, edge of frustration in her voice. Just when it seemed like she and Ianto were actually _getting_ somewhere, somebody has to go and interrupt them.

The door opens, and one of the orderlies steps in, hovering in the doorway. There’s a constable behind her, hat in hand.

“Yes?” Martha prompts.

“Dr Jones, we’ve just got word that you need to prepare your lab for a new body,” the orderly says. She’s grimacing, and so is the constable behind her.

Ianto sucks in a fast breath. Martha glances at him; he’s staring at the constable, who’s avoiding his eye. “There’s been another one?” Ianto asks, low.

“Oh, my god,” Martha whispers.

“Found her just an hour ago,” the constable says, regretfully. “They’ll be moving her soon. And you’re wanted on site, Constable Jones.”

“Yes, I—Of course. I’ll—I’ll come straight away,” Ianto says. He’s gone a little pale and sickly about the edges, but his voice is firm.

The constable nods. He shuffles the brim of his hat around in his hand. “I’ll wait for you at the end of the hall, then, shall I? Show you the way.”

“Yes. Thank you. I’ll be along in a moment.”

The constable tips his head at the orderly, Ianto, and Martha, almost a bow but hastier, and turns and walks away.

Clearing her throat, the orderly shuffles her feet. “Will you be needing help to set up, Dr Jones? Or can I…?” she asks.

“No, no,” Martha says, quickly waving to dismiss the orderly. “I’ve got things in hand. I’ll be fine. You go back to your duties.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

As the orderly leaves as well, the door swinging closed behind her, Martha turns back to Ianto.

“Well,” she says, then stops, at a loss.

“I’ve got to go,” Ianto says, and his voice is still low and serious, but steady, so very steady. Martha sort of wants to hug him. “I’ll be back, after. And we can—Compare, yes?”

Martha nods. “We’ll trade information, yes.”

Ianto is still for a moment longer, almost as if he’s hesitating. Then, he sweeps up his great coat and hat, and gives her another of his perfect, correct little bows.

“I’ll see you later, Dr Jones.”

“See you, Constable Jones.”

—

When Ianto comes back to Martha’s lab that evening, he doesn’t bother waiting for an answer to his knock before he pushes the door open and walks in.

The smile she gives him is tired, but genuine; he looks about as drawn and exhausted as she feels.

Ianto nods toward the victim’s body, still laid out on Martha’s exam table but now covered by a sheet. “Definitely one of Merrick’s?” he asks.

“Yes. Or else a _painfully_ exact copycat,” Martha says. She comes around the exam table and drops into the chair at her desk. She motions for Ianto to come over and, after hesitating a moment, he does, stopping at the far corner of the desk and leaning back against its edge.

“So, tell me, Ianto. What do we know about this one?”

Ianto pulls out his notebook and looks down as if reading from it. From this close, Martha can see the pages; they’re covered in half-sentences and one- or two-word notes that don’t make sense. She wonders if he even needs the notebook.

“Millie Thatcher,” Ianto says. “Twenty-eight years old, one of six—or maybe eight—children, her mother is deceased and her father incarcerated. No-one I spoke to could give me the names or directions of her siblings. She had one child, a boy aged seven, father unidentified; he’s been taken to an orphanage.”

Martha winces. “Poor kid. And Millie, what was her profession?”

“Same as the last three victims. She was a,” Ianto falters, his cheeks going a little pink, “a woman of the night.”

“Oldest profession in the world,” Martha says. She keeps her voice crisp, because Ianto is still blushing and looking sheepish just from having almost-said _prostitute_. He’s ridiculous, he is, and also a little adorable. “And it kept her son fed, I imagine.”

“He seemed in excellent health,” Ianto agrees.

“Were there any clues from where Millie was taken?” Martha asks.

“Several witnesses report seeing a man in a plumed tricorne hat, around the time they last remember seeing Millie,” Ianto says, turning his notebook and passing it over for her to review his notes herself. Viewed right-side up, they make a little more sense, but they still seem to contain only about a third of the information that Ianto just shared with Martha. “Nothing about the medallion, but the hat would be the more noticeable from a distance, anyway. And there were sightings of a fine, unmarked black coach in the area.”

“Basically, all the same clues from the previous three victims,” Martha says, shaking her head. She pushes the notebook back to Ianto, who closes it and slips it back in its pocket.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything new, no.” Ianto sighs. “I’ll go over it all again when I get home, though. See if anything jumps out at me.”

Martha sighs, too. “Yeah,” she says, and lets her head droop until her temple’s resting against the heel of her palm. “Good luck with that.”

—

Ianto is waiting for Martha outside the Sanitarium the next morning, leaning against one of the brick gateposts under the wrought-iron arch over the main gate. He doesn’t spot her right away, and Martha slows to get a good look at him. He’s got his hat in his hand, and his hair’s a little disordered, his shoulders slumped. He lifts his head, as she gets close; there are dark smudges under his eyes.

“Did you get any sleep last night?” Martha asks, frowning. “Or were you jumped on the way here?”

He doesn’t seem to have heard her.

“We have to make our move soon,” Ianto says, urgently, pushing off the gatepost to follow her into the Sanitarium.

“I know,” Martha agrees, nodding, but still eyeing him with a bit of concern. “We can’t let Dr Merrick keep getting away with—”

“No, I meant, we have to make our move _soon_ , if we want to catch him in the act.”

Martha stops talking. And walking. She stares at Ianto. “But. He’s only just taken a victim. Surely he wouldn’t—”

“He’s escalating,” Ianto says. “Moving faster. Like an addict, taking less and less time for the high to wear off. If he holds true to his pattern—”

“He has a _pattern_?” Martha blurts.

“Yes, I noticed it last evening, when I was reviewing the information.”

Martha’s eyes narrow. “I knew it. You _didn’t_ sleep last night.”

“I did,” Ianto says. He follows it up with a long, slow blink over bleary eyes.

“Right,” Martha says, making a decision, and leads him into the building.

—

“Get in here and sit down, before you fall down,” Martha orders, holding the door to her lab open.

“I’m all right,” Ianto says.

He goes over like a house of cards toppling, though, when she pushes him at her desk chair.

“Yeah, you’re just _great_ , aren’t you.”

“I _did_ sleep a little,” he tries. He puts a hand on the edge of the desk, like he’s going to lever himself back up.

Martha points a stern finger, and her best no-more-of-this-nonsense look, at him. Ianto freezes, staring at her.

“You just sit there and be quiet while I put away my things,” Martha says. “Then, you can tell me all about what you’ve got figured out.”

After a moment, Ianto nods. His hand slips off the desk, back into his lap.

With a satisfied nod, Martha turns away and begins undoing the brass buttons on her coat. Once she’s got the heavy wool length of it hung on its peg, her hat along with it, and her gloves tucked away in the pockets where they belong, she takes down her lab coat and pulls it on.

“There,” she says, turning back to Ianto and her desk. “Now, let’s—”

Ianto is slumped in her chair, his head tipped down toward his chest, and his eyes drifting closed.

Martha crosses her arms.

“Oh, you’re definitely not tired, or anything,” she mutters.

Ianto’s head jerks up. “I—Yes?” He rubs at his eyes hastily. “Martha?”

A smile tugs at Martha’s mouth without her permission.

“What do you say we find some tea before we start, huh?”

—

Just hunting down a tea service they can use, and preparing it, seems to wake Ianto considerably. By the time they’re back in Martha’s lab at the desk, tea laid out between them, he looks almost his usual self.

“So. What’s this about Dr Merrick having a pattern?”

“Well, the bodies have been found all over town, more or less, right? But the women are only disappearing from one neighborhood, and on certain nights,” Ianto explains. “It’s—Here, I’ve marked it all down for you.”

He pulls something from the pocket where he usually keeps his notebook, and hands it to her. Martha starts unfolding it and finds a map, of the whole city, with four little checks marked out in red all clustered together, and four in blue spread more widely. There’s a date and a time next to all eight.

“You did this last night?” she asks, and goes to spread it out over her desk to get a better look.

“Yes,” Ianto says, hurriedly rescuing the tea service and clearing it away to the side. “Well, I’d been laying it out much like that in my head, but I wanted the visual to be sure of the pattern.”

“It’s good. It’s—really good. Brilliant actually.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Ianto says, stilted, after a moment. Martha looks up to find him looking pleased and pink around the edges. She grins.

“And,” she says, “I definitely see what you mean, about the pattern.”

“Yes? I mean, yes, good. It’s right there, if you look for it.”

Martha nods. She taps the map, thoughtful. “And you think he’ll strike again soon?”

“Yes, almost definitely. Tonight or tomorrow, unless I miss my guess,” Ianto says.

“If we could catch him in the act…”

“That’s what I was thinking. Or, if not, at least we can keep the women he targets safe for another night.”

“Well. We’d better get to it, then, don’t you think?” Martha says, and is pleased to see Ianto return her grin with one of his own.

—

“… then, with that settled, that just leaves finding the people to put it into action,” Ianto says, sometime later, sitting back with a satisfied air. “I know of a few friends who can help.”

“And me,” Martha says. “I’m coming, too.”

Ianto purses his lips.

Martha narrows her eyes. “I _am_ coming, Ianto.”

“Look, don’t—I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, Dr Jones, but my friends, they’re all, well, they’re constables, too. Which means they’re trained. And, uh.” Ianto pauses. He clears his throat. “ _Armed_.”

“Armed, are they,” Martha says, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrows. “And you’re saying you think I’m not?”

“ _Are_ you?”

Martha goes and pulls her crackler out of her coat, plops it down in front of Ianto, right on top the little cluster of red checks.

“I’m _coming_ ,” she says.

Ianto leans forward, professional interest caught, and starts to look it over.

“This—This can’t use bullets like a pistol, surely,” he murmurs. “Is it a ray gun?”

“Sort of. It delivers a pulse of electric energy which stuns the target,” Martha explains. “Not for long, it’s nothing like Dr Merrick’s paralyzer or anything. But long enough to get away, or properly restrain whoever, or—Well. It’s helpful, anyway.”

“It’s a clever device,” Ianto says, turning the crackler this way and that. “I don’t think I’ve seen the design before.”

“My Mickey made it,” Martha explains. There’s pride and affection in her voice, and she doesn’t try to tamp them down the way she would if she were talking to Inspector Raeburn or some of the other doctors who work here at the Sanitarium. “He’s a clockwork artificer, has a shop out the cellar of our little place and everything.”

“He’s very good at it. And you sound very fond.” Ianto pauses, and looks up at her. “Is he your husband?”

Martha grins, and shakes her head. “Nah. My soulbond. Coming up on a year now.”

Ianto makes a soft _oh_ sound, nods, and looks away. “Congratulations. That’s—You must be very happy.”

“Yeah. We are, yeah,” Martha says, and she wants to keep smiling, that warm ball of happiness in her chest just thinking about Mickey and knowing he’s out there feeling just as warm and happy whenever he thinks about her. But Ianto’s looking away now, off at nothing instead of meeting her eyes like she’s got used to, and his face is all folded down.

He looks—Martha doesn’t want to call it sadness. It doesn’t look that straightforward.

“Ianto?” she asks.

“I wanted to try with Lisa, my—sweetheart, I suppose. For a soulbond, I mean,” Ianto blurts. He presses his lips together right after, like perhaps he didn’t mean to say that at all, and still doesn’t look at her.

“Well, why don’t you?” Martha smiles more, tries to make it look encouraging, in case he glances back her way. And, anyway, it’ll come across in her voice. “I know it can seem scary, a risk like that, and an awful big commitment besides, but it’s worth it, when it takes. Mickey and I are even better, since, stronger and—”

“She’s dead.”

The rest of Martha’s words get heavy and clog up her throat.

Now— _now_ Ianto turns his eyes to her, and Martha takes one look into them and really wishes he hadn’t.

“She was an archivist for the Police Headquarters in the Capital. Four months ago, she was murdered on her way to work,” Ianto says. His voice is low and chillingly precise, the kind of emotionless that only comes out when the speaker is keeping too much inside to actually _feel_ any of it. “Gang violence, my superiors called it. The Metal Men.”

Martha clears her throat, until it feels like maybe she can speak through again. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—I didn’t realize,” she manages.

“They wouldn’t let me investigate. She was killed and there was nothing I could do, and it was all so _senseless_. I came to Cardamom City to get away from the—To get away,” he concludes.

Martha’s chest feels too tight, now, where all the warmth was a few minutes ago. Under her own sorrow, she can feel worry that isn’t hers; she’s going to have to think of some way to explain this to Mickey without going into details about Ianto’s, well. Ianto’s tragedy.

“Ianto,” she says, feeling helpless to do anything for someone she’s beginning to consider a friend, and _hating_ it. After a second, she grasps his shoulder, hoping he’ll accept her sympathy and not take it just for pity. “We’ll catch this one, Ianto.”

Ianto makes a noise, like a deep inhale only wetter, and nods. One of his hands comes up to his face, the back rubbing hastily at his eyes.

“No matter what your superiors—what Raeburn says, we’re going to catch this man, and stop him killing anyone else.”

“Yeah,” he says, voice quiet, but firm. “Yeah, we definitely are.”

Martha tights her grip on his shoulder briefly. “Now, then. You were saying something about laying some kind of a trap in that particular neighborhood?” she says.

She doesn’t take her hand away.

—

Ianto’s collection of ‘a few friends who can help’ is, in actuality, half a dozen constables, and his usual watch partner. They filter around the back corner of the station house in ones and twos, until there are seven of them clustered in a loose semi-circle around Martha and Ianto in the small ring of light from Ianto’s lantern.

“All right, is everyone here?” Ianto says, looking from one end of the ring to the other. He seems to be counting faces, because when he gets to the woman standing closest to Martha—his watch partner, who gives a quick grin as their eyes meet—he nods, and says, “Good, then I’ll get started. Now, I’ve calculated from the times and locations of killer’s victims so far that he’s probably going to strike again tonight, or possibly tomorrow. And it will most likely happen somewhere in this ten block radius.” He indicates the neighborhood he means on the map they’ve laid over the end of a crate they found in the alley.

“Not exactly a small area for nine people to monitor two nights in a row,” Ianto’s watch partner says, after looking it over, raising her eyebrows at him.

“We don’t have to monitor it, Gwen,” Ianto says, and Martha watches him smile a little, as he adds, “We just have to sweep it. Make sure one of us walks through every street, every alley, at least once an hour.”

Gwen’s eyebrows don’t go back down. “Really. And that’s going to do what, exactly?”

“It’s going to give our witness pool someone to tell, if one of their own goes missing.”

Gwen face goes slack with surprise. She’s not the only one gaping at Ianto; the rest of the constables are, too.

“What are you _talking_ about?” one of them splutters. And, “ _Who_?” another one says, startled.

“All of the victims so far have had a—particular sort of job. I’ve just asked the rest of the ladies of their profession, in that area, to keep an eye out for each other, and alert us as soon as possible if anything— _untoward_ , should happen.”

One of the constables, a man with a thick mustache and disapproving eyebrows, says, “You’re telling me we’re going to use whores to catch this bastard?”

“The ladies don’t want to be murdered any more than we want them to keep showing up as bodies whose deaths we have to investigate,” Ianto says, his voice cool. “It hardly took any persuading for them to agree to my scheme.”

“Well it wouldn’t, would it,” Gwen mutters.

“You sure they weren’t just saying what they thought you wanted to hear so they could get you to sample the wares?” one of the others asks, frowning at Ianto.

Ianto stiffens.

“Well _shit_ , son,” the constable nearest Gwen says, under her breath, and hides her mouth with one hand when Martha looks over.

“They want to _not die_. I don’t know how much plainer I can possibly make it.”

“But they—”

“Right,” Gwen says, quickly, overriding the mustached constable. “So, what do we have to do, then? To get these women to talk to us?”

“Just walk the streets in your uniforms,” Ianto says. “They won’t talk to you unless something’s wrong, but if it is, the uniform will let them know you’re working with me, and they’ll tell you.”

Nods go around the circle.

“Then what?” one of them asks. “If we hear something’s wrong?”

“Then, you get me, and the rest of us, and we find whoever’s missing or deal with whatever’s wrong.”

“Sound good?” Martha asks, and gets more nods.

“Right, then. Off we go.”

—

There’s nothing for the first hour. Martha and Ianto cross paths in their sweeps, just as they should.

“Anything?” he asks, coming to a stop beside her on the corner.

“Well, I’ve been offered two ‘goes’ for half off,” Martha says, dryly. “Does that count?”

The tips of Ianto’s ears go pink and he shakes his head, smiling tightly. “Not exactly progress, no.”

Martha grins. “Didn’t think so. Still, though. Bet I get more offers before the night’s over than you do,” she says, and watches the rest of his face turn to match his ears.

“You’re already behind,” he mutters. “By about half a dozen.”

Martha’s startled into laughing, delighted. Ianto stays flushed, and his shoulders hunch a little, but he smiles back. She’s still laughing when Ianto tips his hat to her and continues his route.

—

Hours and still nothing later, with cold damp starting to seep in even through her boots and long wool coat, Martha’s sweep converges with two of the deputies’; the one with the heavy mustache and the one who hid her smile behind her hand.

“Hallo, Dr Jones,” the smiler calls cheerfully.

“Hey, Constable,” Martha says, nodding at her, then to Mustache. “And Constable. Anything to report?”

Mustache grunts. “Not a blasted thing.”

“Me, either,” Smiley says, shaking her head.

“Damn,” Martha sighs. She stops rubbing her hands together, tucks them in close up under her arms. “Well, there’s still a few hours of dark left. Keep your eyes peeled, Ianto did think tonight was most likely.”

“Maybe he’s got it wrong,” Mustache says. Martha throws him a sharp look, but Mustache just shrugs and keeps frowning, eyebrows extra disapproving. “What? A man can’t be right _every_ time. Has to be wrong at least once in a while.”

“Well, we don’t know if he’s wrong this time yet or not,” Smiley says. Her voice is firm. “And I think he’s probably—”

“ _Martha_!”

Hurried footsteps sound not that far away, getting louder; coming towards them. A moment later, Ianto rounds the corner up ahead at a flat sprint. He doesn’t slow when he sees them, so that when he stops beside them, using Smiley’s shoulder to break himself, it’s with a skid that almost takes his feet from under them.

“Marth—” Ianto tries to say, and breaks off, gulping in air.

“All right, there, Jones?” Mustache asks, as frowning as ever.

Ianto shakes his head.

“Ianto?” Martha says sharply. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Susie Woods,” Ianto says, clipped and too-fast, grim all the way through. “She was supposed to check in twenty minutes ago.”

Martha’s stomach drops, at the same time her heart picks up.

“And she hasn’t?”

“She hasn’t,” he confirms.

Martha presses her palms to her forehead briefly, jerks them away again after, sharp and frustrated. “ _Damn_ it!”

“But,” Ianto says.

Martha whirls back to face him.

Ianto’s wearing something that’s almost a smile, but it’s—not a nice one. Not in the least. “But, an urchin near her usual spot says she saw a large black coach heading for the docks.”

“That’s a _huge_ area, we could spend all night and never find—”

“It was pulled by two _very_ white horses, and the urchin’s older brother snuck onto the back footman’s rest. She says he’ll hop off before they enter any buildings, and find somewhere to hide and wait for me.”

Ianto’s smile suddenly makes sense.

“All we have to do is get close,” Martha breathes, realization breaking over her like a fresh breeze in a smokey room.

“To the docks, Dr Jones?” Ianto asks, his smile widening. It makes Martha shiver, a little, but her face is giving him an answering smile that she suspects isn’t any more pleasant.

“The docks, Constable Jones.”

—

A thin figure in ragged clothes with a shock of wild hair darts out from behind a stack of crates, the third street Martha and Ianto and their little group of constables try in the dock district. There are only seven of them, Ianto having sent Mustache and Mustache’s stout little partner running off to the station house to rally reinforcements.

“Constable Jones, Constable Jones,” the boy calls at them, low, waving his arms to get their attention.

Ianto goes right over. “Here, Liam? Did they stop here?”

“There, Constable Jones,” Liam says, pointing at one of the closer shipping houses, empty at this hour. It’s the kind with a few offices in the front, and walls of uneven length stretching out back on either side of an open space for loading and sorting, facing the long line of docks and, beyond that, the harbor.

“In there?” Ianto asks. “Do you know which room they—”

“No, out back. In—in the open,” Liam says, shaking his head. “I’d’ve stayed closer, Constable Jones, but I—I didn’t—”

“Nobody’d want to watch that,” Ianto cuts in, fast, fast, clapping Liam on the shoulder, already gesturing Gwen and Smiley around one side of the building with his other hand. “You did well. Go along, now.”

“But, Constable—”

“You three, come with me,” Martha says, while Liam is still trying to argue into being allowed to stay and be heroic, and heads around the other side of the building.

There are two figures in the open air loading area, a woman lying impossibly, improbably still out there in the middle, dress in bloody shreds around her. And kneeling over her, back to the docks and the harbor and Martha, a man in a heavy black coat and tricorne hat with a large orange plume. Moonlight glints off the knife as he raises it again.

“ _Drop it_ ,” Smiley shouts.

Merrick startles, jerking around to stare at them, eyes shocked wide and white. “What—”

“Get him,” Martha orders, and the broad-shouldered young constable who’d followed Martha leaps forward smooth as Mickey’s clockworkings, not even bothering to raise his baton, catching Merrick in the gut and tackling him to the ground. Merrick doesn’t even have a chance to raise his knife against the constable.

Then Ianto is there, saying, “Susie? Has someone checked—”

“We’re too late,” Gwen gasps out. She’s pale, the whites of her eyes showing too, and her hand is shaking around her baton. “God, she’s—we’re too bloody late.”

Ianto hits his knees next to the woman’s body, not sparing even a glance for where the constables are hustling Merrick into shackles, presses his hand to the side of her neck, and—

“Martha! She’s alive!”

—

Things get a bit crazy, after that.

The last Martha sees of Ianto for several hours, he’s giving orders to the constables restraining Merrick—a pair of the friends he enlisted for the sweeps earlier, the grinning woman and a broad shouldered young man—at the same time he’s telling the fresh ones arriving how to handle the scene. He looks busy, but very much in control of himself.

Martha’s busy too, supervising Susie Woods getting rushed to the Sanitarium, and assuring that her treatment will be seen to by the best doctors available. Then it’s all directing her shocked colleagues to _get to work_ already, and answering their bewildered questions about _how_ and _why_ and _what was Martha even doing out at night in that neighborhood to begin with_ , and—

“Catching a murderer,” Martha returns, flat. “What else would I be doing?”

Too late, she catches the flash of a photo bulb out the corner of her eye. She turns to find a pair of people scurrying away down the corridor like they don’t belong, one clutching a big photographing box under his arm and the other scribbling away on a pad of paper even as she dodges orderlies.

“Well,” Dr Harper says, from next to Martha, watching with her as the pair flee. “That’s us on the front page, I expect.”

“Oh, you wish,” Martha scoffs. Part of her worries, a little, though.

—

It turns out, the reporters must have got a picture of Ianto as well, because the morning edition of the _Cardamom Times_ has a shot of him—paused on the station house steps, Merrick behind him being led into the building in shackles, and Ianto himself looking off at something the camera didn’t catch, face cool and remote and determined—situated just next to the shot of Martha standing in the hospital corridor—her hair just starting to come down from its knot in a mess of frizz, the light glinting off it like some kind of bloody _halo_ , and Dr Harper cut from the picture entirely—and underneath them both the legend,

_Intrepid Duo Unravel Mysterious Serial Deaths; Killer In Custody._

“Well,” Mickey says, staring down at it over her shoulder. “I’ll be. I’m soulbonded to a public hero.” A pause, and she feels his lips against her ear. “And everybody even knows it, for once.”

“Hush, you,” Martha mutters, blushing at the praise, but—

The article’s a little too inflammatory, leans a little too heavy on how she and Ianto went outside the strict boundaries of their jobs. What comes from this can’t be entirely good, no matter the thrill she gets seeing her face on the front page.

—

Martha doesn’t even reach her lab, before the panting, winded courier catches up with her, thrusting a slim envelope with an official looking seal at her even as he hunches over trying to catch his breath.

She’s not at all surprised to find, when she opens the envelope, a summons to the station house, signed by the Chief Inspector of Police and Chairman of the Sanitarium Directors Board both.

—

The Chief Inspector’s waiting, when Martha makes it to his office. So is the Chairman, and—

Ianto, standing tall and straight and unmoving in front of the Chief Inspector’s desk. He darts a glance at Martha as she enters, but then his eyes go back to a point on the floor right in front of the desk.

The Chairman is standing on the other side of the desk, nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with the Chief Inspector.

Martha wonders who’ll get their dressing-down first, her or Ianto.

She doesn’t have to wonder long.

—

“Regardless of Raeburn’s culpability in trying to cover up damning evidence—”

“He was going to let someone get away with _murder_ ,” Ianto says, stiffly.

“And he’s been relieved of his position for it, and publicly denounced. But _regardless_ of that. Regardless, you acted above your station, Constable Jones,” the Chief Inspector says. “It’s completely unacceptable, wholly disruptive to discipline, morale, and the natural order of things—”

He has a lot more to say, too. Pretty much all of it boils down to _you made us look bad_.

Martha looks over, trying to catch Ianto’s eye, but he’s still staring at the floor. His shoulders are set, matching the stubborn line of his jaw.

“Yes,” Ianto says. “I did.”

“I recommend that you resign.” The Chief Inspector purses his lips, something that’s probably a strategic pause. “Don’t make the people in place to do something about you, have to.”

Ianto nods, stiffly. “Understood. Sir.”

The Chief Inspector regards him narrowly for another moment or two, then nods back, much less stiffly, crisp and business-like. He glances at Martha.

“As for _Doctor_ Jones—Chairman, if you would?” he says, invitingly.

The Chairman of the Board clears her throat, and turns her attention—flint-eyed, cold—on Martha.

“You are an intelligent person, Dr Jones. I hope I don’t need to tell you how _hugely_ you have overstepped yourself,” the Chairman says.

“I helped catch the murderer of four innocent women,” Martha says, and maybe her voice is too firm—Ianto stiffens further beside her, and the Chairman and Chief Inspector’s frowns both get deeper in the lines—but she’s not ashamed of what she did and there is _nothing_ these people could do to make her act it. “And prevented the death of a fifth.”

“You are a _doctor_ ,” the Chief Inspector snaps, his face going a little red.

“I know. It was brilliant work for an amateur, I thought.”

Ianto makes a noise almost like a laugh. He immediately smothers it in a hideously fake cough.

“What the Chief Inspector means to point out is, it was _not your place_ ,” the Chairman says, and she’s looking a bit overheated and annoyed, as well. “If this is what’s to come of allowing you access to police investigations—”

“She helped _solve it_ , for goodness’ sa—” Ianto starts.

The Chief Inspector slaps a hand on his desk and half-shouts, “Blast it, would you both be _silent_?”

Ianto falls back half a step, bringing him level with Martha—who lifts her chin and stands firm, knowing Ianto’s by her side; whatever blow the Chief Inspector and the Chairman think they’re delivering, Martha and Ianto can take it.

—

Martha and Ianto walk out of the Chief Inspector’s office without jobs, either of them.

It is, strangely, not at all as terrible as Martha would have expected unemployment to feel.

“That could probably have gone better,” Ianto says, as they make their way toward the front entrance of the building.

“Could’ve gone worse, too,” Martha says.

“Yes, they could’ve killed us, you’re right.”

Martha laughs, a little. She says, teasingly, “There’s no need to be sarcastic, young man.”

Ianto is giving her very serious eyes, though. “Dr Jones, I. Uh.”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry I got you fired, as well.”

“Eh, it serves them right. Now they’ll have to deal with Dr Harper if they want their post-mortems. And he’s a _right_ grumpy bugger,” Martha adds.

“Still. I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Martha says, drawing to a stop, and giving Ianto a challenging look. “Being smarter than your bosses? Or letting me be smart with you?”

“I didn’t mean—”

Martha shakes her head, and cuts him off. “Look. Do you regret it?”

Ianto hesitates.

“Do you?” Martha pushes. “Could you look me in the eye and honestly say you’d have done a thing different, if you had the chance of a do-over?”

“No. We did the right thing,” Ianto says, softly, after another moment. “I know we did.”

“Course we did,” Martha says. She slips her arm around the crook of his elbow, and smiles up at him. “Now then. Fancy a celebratory pint?”

Ianto doesn’t exactly smile back, but his sigh sounds sort of fond. Martha’ll take it.

“Well. If you insist.”

“I definitely insist,” she says.

* * *

“We should do this,” Martha says, later, when they’ve been settled at a little table in the corner of her local for long enough to have downed a pint each and be well into working on their seconds. The fact that it’s barely gone midday be damned; Ianto can’t have got much more sleep last night than she did, and what she got was precious little. Besides, they’ve earned this, damn it.

Ianto looks up from staring forlornly into his pint, and frowns. “Do what?”

“Investigate things together. Professionally. I mean, it’s not like we’ve jobs we’d have to give up, anymore.”

Ianto just keeps frowning. His forehead wrinkles.

“No, I’m serious,” Martha insists, earnestly. “We really should. We could start an agency, get an office, everything. It would brilliant.”

“But what would we investigate?” Ianto asks.

“This!” Martha says, waving her hand about them. She’s not talking about the pub—with it’s clusters of chattering people, it’s too-few gaslamps glowing like opaque globes around the edges of the room, and the Endless Phonograph in the corner that skips every four minutes and thirty-six seconds because whoever slapped it together after the last brawl wasn’t as good as her Mickey—and she’s pretty sure Ianto knows she isn’t, too. “Cases!”

Ianto squints his eyes at her, his lips pinching together a little. “What sort of cases?” he asks, skeptical. He looks like he’s willing to be convinced, maybe.

Martha hopes he’s willing to be convinced.

“Any sort they bring us.”

His brows stay furrowed. “‘They’?”

“Our clients, of course,” Martha says.

“Where would we get _clients_?”

“Don’t be a dummy, we’d advertise.” Martha gives him a smile that’s just a little smug. “There’s always people looking for other people to work stuff out for them.”

“Why would they hire _us_ , though?” Ianto asks.

Martha stares at him for a moment. There’s a little line between his eyebrows; and he’s frowning, lips still pinched tight.

“Ianto,” she says, slowly, “we just got our pictures in the paper, catching a _multiple murderer_. I think there’s lots of people who’d absolutely _love_ to hire us.”

“Oh.” Ianto pauses. His face smoothes out. “Yes, that’s—I’d forgotten, for a moment. About the paper.”

“There’s people who’d go _mental_ to have us solve their little mysteries.”

“Yes. Right you are,” Ianto agrees. He sips at his pint a couple of times. Then, “Where should we get an office, do you think?”

Oh, she’s absolutely _got him_ , now.

“Jones and Jones, Private Investigators,” she says, dreamily. “Oh, we’re going to make _such_ a good team, Ianto.”

“I know,” Ianto says, the corners of his mouth turning up. “Though, I think we already are.”

Martha smiles again, an outright grin now. Wait until Mickey hears about _this_.

**Author's Note:**

> Phew! Super glad that's done. This thing took me two weeks — but now that it's done, I can work on the _fun_ fic, where the Joneses run into the Captain. I am _so_ looking forward to it. :D


End file.
